


Four Times Ronan Lynch Visited Adam at College (And One Time He Didn’t)

by ronanlynchisneversleepingagain



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, M/M, that's pretty much all this is tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 19:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7186862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronanlynchisneversleepingagain/pseuds/ronanlynchisneversleepingagain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time that Ronan Lynch visited Adam at college was a disaster. The other times were slightly less so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Times Ronan Lynch Visited Adam at College (And One Time He Didn’t)

**Author's Note:**

> nobody asked me to write this, but you know....whatever.

\--

 

_ 1 _

 

\--

 

The first time that Ronan Lynch visited Adam at college was a disaster. 

The ivy-covered brick buildings and well-manicured lawns were anathema to Ronan – the stuff nightmares were made of. Adam could see him suffocating, although Ronan never would have said so. Ronan didn’t say much at all that weekend. Ronan had never been a wordsmith, but it was strange for him to pass up an opportunity to make fun of a glee club performing on the steps of the old chapel on campus or the inexplicable wardrobe choices of some of Adam’s peers. 

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Adam asked him as he walked with Ronan towards his dorm. Ronan had stuffed his hands in his pockets and the cord from his headphones swung down the front of his hoodie, untethered. Ronan shrugged and Adam felt the anger roll of off Ronan and onto himself. Adam sighed. “I should have just come to the Barns.” 

“No,” Ronan said, gruff and cross. “It’s fine.”

“Obviously, it isn’t,” Adam said. Ronan crossed his arms across his chest and puffed a little. He was spoiling for a fight and Adam did nothing to talk him out of it. 

“What do you want me to say, man?” Ronan asked. His shoulders were hunched angrily and Chainsaw took the opportunity to stop circling above them and land on Ronan’s shoulder. Chainsaw ruffled her feathers, shaking herself and then immediately began to groom. The incongruity of the scene – Ronan Lynch standing in the middle of campus with his familiar on his shoulder – struck Adam just then. These were two worlds that would never be comfortable with each other. 

Still, Adam said, because he couldn’t help himself and because it was what he wanted, “Say you’re happy to be here.”

“I’m not,” Ronan said, but did concede to taking his hands out of his pockets and standing up a little straighter. Chainsaw re-adjusted herself with a resentful squawk and Ronan flicked at her absently, a well-worn interaction. Adam couldn’t remember why he’d thought this might be a good idea. Ronan, removed from the Barns and Cabeswater, was a volatile entity that had no outlet.

They walked until they reached Adam’s dorm on the other side of campus. The building was old and square, tired of its occupants and the campus around it, but unable to leave them. When Adam had dreamed of college, he had thought the dorm rooms might be a lot like the Aglionby dorm rooms and they were, but smaller and a little shabbier. It suited him fine most days, but now, with Ronan there, taking the in the squat dorm in front of them, he felt suddenly self-conscious. 

“You don’t have to stay here, you know,” Adam said. He was looking at the ground, instead of Ronan. His sneaker was beginning to become untied and the sole was peeling from too much walking and biking lately. He would need new ones soon. 

Ronan sighed dramatically, but this time, there was no malice in it. He took Adam’s hands and twined their fingers together, studying their hands with a satisfied, small pout to his lips. Adam could not stop looking at him. It had been so long since he’d last been able to look at Ronan that he felt greedy. 

Finally, Ronan said, “I’m happy to be here  _ with you _ .”

Two days later, hours after Ronan had left to return to the Barns, Adam unzipped his unusually heavy backpack to find a new pair of sneakers tucked neatly away at the bottom of the large sack, cleverly hidden under a textbook. They were detail-perfect, down to the cherry-red canvas and white sides, and felt lavish although Adam knew that they had cost Ronan nothing. He sent Ronan a simple text of  _ Thanks _ , but didn’t get a response. It didn’t matter - Adam knew he’d read it and the thought of Ronan’s satisfied smirk while doing so was enough. 

  
  
  


\--

 

_ 2 _

 

\--

  
  


It was Chainsaw who announced Ronan by flapping her way across a courtyard full of students to land squarely in the middle of Adam’s textbook as he studied at one of the patio tables. The students around him stared and whispered to each other when Adam reached out to pet the strangely large raven and the way it cawed back to him familiarly. Adam sighed – he was already an outsider here, already marked as  _ just a little bit strange _ – and he knew this would only add to his reputation. He met a few of the students’ eyes around him and was relieved that he didn’t recognize any of them. It was a large school. 

Ronan appeared a moment later, further announced by the loud crunch of pecans under his heavy boots.  He was all black and leather and  _ Ronan _ . Adam was so relieved to see him that for a moment he forgot to be angry with him. It had been weeks since Ronan had picked up the phone for Adam. Every call ended in a voicemail and Adam grew weary of talking to himself. 

“Thought maybe you had died,” Adam said. He wanted to say a million other things like  _ Why won’t you just answer your fucking phone? Do you really have to be such an asshole about all of this? _ but he already knew the answers, so it seemed self-defeating. 

“Nice to see you too,” Ronan said. He sounded tired, but cheerful. Adam had told him he wouldn’t be free until after four that day, but he had known all along that Ronan would probably ignore that and arrive when it suited him. 

Ronan grabbed an empty chair from a nearby table crowded with girls who all stared at him with appraising eyes as he swung the chair around to Adam’s small table and threw himself in it. Adam felt a heat just behind his neck and he unconsciously let a hand drift to cup his neck, rubbing it as if he was sore. Ronan watched him, carefully, hungrily. 

“I have class in an hour,” Adam said because he couldn’t think of what else to say and because it was true. Ronan pursed his lips and if it had been two years earlier, Adam knew that he would have said,  _ So what, Parrish? _ but this older Ronan didn’t say anything at all and merely shrugged. Adam was going to class and they both knew it. 

Ronan stroked Chainsaw and Adam turned back to his textbook, but his eyes were drawn back to the boy across from him again and again. Ronan was doing his level best to look entirely uninterested in what was happening in the courtyard, but Adam saw his quick, blue eyes darting after each yell and laugh as the students moved around them. Sometimes, Adam could feel Ronan’s eyes settle on him and he felt that familiar, low burn when they did. It was becoming increasingly hard to remember that he had class. In thirty minutes. 

Ronan tapped his fingers on the table in time to a song that only he could hear and Chainsaw left them in a flurry of feathers and pages turning when she launched into the sky above them. Out of the corner of his eyes, Adam saw a few students lift their heads to watch her go and then, inevitably, those same students’ eyes drifted back over to Adam and Ronan, taking them in and whispering their findings to each other. Adam wondered what it was that the others saw when they looked at the two of them, sitting there together at the table. Ronan clearly did not wonder and glared back at the few remaining gawkers, daring them to say something. Adam sat back in his chair and closed his textbook in acceptance that cramming for class was not going to happen. 

Adam stretched his arms out and slumped down in his chair. His knees bumped against Ronan’s under the table, but he didn’t move his legs away. Ronan watched him with a naked look of frank desire on his face and Adam felt the heat of the look on his own face.

“What are you doing later?” Ronan asked. He had stopped tapping his fingers and leaned forward across the table.

Adam smiled, a small, strangled laugh escaping him.

“I was thinking that I might spend some quality time with my boyfriend,” he said. The word  _ boyfriend  _ still felt sticky sweet and wonderful on Adam’s tongue - a treat that he might never be finished savoring. 

Ronan smiled and Adam felt something inside of him break at the sight of the way it reached into his eyes and danced there. Ten minutes until class. 

  
  


\--

 

_ 3 _

 

_ \-- _

 

Adam had been planning on driving home for Winter Break, when his car had died. It was a terrible thing, all whining and smoke, and when he popped the hood, the serpentine belt had shredded so thoroughly that it pulled loose some other parts He had called Ronan then to let him know that he wouldn’t be back at the Barns for a few days. Ronan hadn’t picked up, so he left a short message and then called a tow truck. His mind was hastily doing the math on how much the belt and other parts would cost him and the always dwindling number in his checking account. His scholarship was enough to cover room and board, but not much else and Adam only had time for a few hours at the local garage a week if he wanted to keep afloat in his classes. 

It was too late to work on the car that night anyway, so Adam took the bus back to the dorms and threw himself onto his lumpy twin bed reluctantly. He had been dreaming in anticipation of a softer bed with Ronan Lynch in it for days now and he felt robbed of their comforts. He checked his phone again to see if Ronan had called or texted, but it was empty, as always. 

The knock came at his door four hours later, startling Adam from fitful sleep. He should have known who it was by the insistent pounding, but his heart still skipped a beat when he saw Ronan after he wrenched the door open. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked. Adam’s voice and head were thick with sleep. 

“I’m here to take you home, since your shitbox couldn’t handle the job,” Ronan said. He let himself into the small dorm room. “Are you ready?”

Adam yawned loudly and rubbed his eyes, leaning back against his bed. The fact of Ronan in his bedroom after such a long night was an impossible reality right then.

“Can we wait ‘til morning?” Adam asked, biting back another yawn. 

Ronan smiled, a soft, curving turn of the lips and Adam caught his hand and pulled him closer. Adam kissed Ronan with his hands curling around his neck, holding the boy’s face to his. Ronan’s lips were warm and soft, exactly as Adam remembered them. He smiled and pulled away.

“Yeah,” Ronan agreed. “It can wait ‘til morning.”

Adam closed his eyes in agreement and with one herculean effort, pulled himself back into his bed. He heard Ronan kicking off his boots and then, like a dream manifested, he was there next to Adam in the tiny bed, too small for the two of them to fit comfortably on. Adam pulled himself against Ronan, breathing in the scent of woods and leather that was so intrinsic to the Lynch boy.

“Ronan?” Adam said, after a long while.  “I missed you, too.” 

“Go to sleep, asshole.” Ronan mumbled. Adam smiled. 

  
  


\--

 

_ 4 _

 

\--

  
  


“What’s with you?” Ronan asked. Adam stabbed at his food and sighed. He had no appetite after his fight with his roommate, but he also under no circumstances wanted to tell Ronan what had happened because it would definitely make Ronan angry and would possibly endanger Tyler depending on how angry. He couldn’t think of a way around the truth except to sulk silently across the table from Ronan, which wasn’t fair either because he hadn’t seen Ronan in almost a month and now, he was here and Adam was too put out to even enjoy it.

“Nothing,” he said. He dragged a hand across his face and shook his head. “Can we get out of here?” The lights of the restaurant were low, romantic and entirely at odds with his mood. 

“Parrish, we can do whatever you want to do,” Ronan said. His eyes were narrowed and canny. Ronan reached across the table and snuffed out the candle that flickered between them with his fingertips. Adam thought it was entirely unnecessary, especially since the waiter would have to come and re-light it for the next customers now. Normally, he would have said so, but tonight it didn’t seem to matter all that much.

Ronan  slid out of the booth and took his wallet from his back pocket in the same motion. Adam reached for his as well, but Ronan cast him a withering look. 

“You didn’t even eat your food, asshole,” Ronan said. 

“I can still pay for myself,” Adam argued and slapped a bill on the table. His simmering anger was beginning to spill out onto things that were entirely unrelated to his roommate despite his best efforts to keep it contained to the fight this morning. This fight happening over money - the familiar, well-worn fight of who was paying and how much - was a fight that Adam didn’t want to lose just then for no particular reason except that he was tired of having it at all. Ronan rolled his eyes and snatched Adam’s bill away, leaving two fresh $20s there instead. He pulled Adam away from the table and as soon as they were out of the front door, he stuffed the now crumpled bill into Adam’s front pocket as though that was the end of it.

“You don’t need to pay for me,” Adam said and crossed his arms, planting himself there. 

“I know that,” Ronan was practically growling. Adam refused to feel anything but annoyed with him, although under normal circumstances he would have admired the curl of Ronan’s lips and probably would have thought about kissing them later. Ronan was all frenetic energy, pacing outside the restaurant while Adam stood there, arms crossed and sullen.  “Jesus fuck, Adam, can you just tell me and get it over with?” 

Ronan’s voice broke faintly on the last word and it was this that instantly dissipated Adam’s irritation. His head snapped up to study Ronan and found the other boy looking somehow  _ wounded _ . Ronan was looking at him, with rounded shoulders and steady eyes, as though he were about to take a hit. Adam knew that look from the inside out, but he had never seen it on Ronan before and so, it discomfited him. 

“What?” Adam asked. 

“You’ve been working up to it all night, Parrish,” Ronan said, the words grinding out as though they were painful in his mouth. Ronan kicked the wall next to them and looked as though he wanted to punch the wall, his fists balling by his sides with anger or maybe, something else entirely. “Just say it and get it over with.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Adam asked again. He grabbed Ronan’s arm, but the other boy yanked it away as though Adam’s touch had burned him. RIght then, Ronan reminded Adam more of a wild animal than a boy, but he wasn’t sure what had sparked the transformation.

Ronan walked away from him suddenly, arms folded over the top of his head. Adam followed him to the BMW where Ronan had wrenched his door open and thrown himself inside. He didn’t immediately get inside with Ronan, but instead he leaned against the passenger door and folded his hands in thought, trying to solve the jigsaw that was Ronan Lynch’s emotional interior. Finally, he opened the door and folded himself neatly inside. Ronan was completely still, staring at his hands on the steering wheel, and Adam hated himself for the image that it conjured of another night, months ago, when he had been with Ronan in this same car after Aurora Lynch had died. 

_ Don’t break him, Adam _ , Gansey’s voice whispered in his head. Adam sighed, because at the time, he hadn’t fully understood Gansey’s words, but now looking at this tightly wound, miserable version of Ronan, he thought he was beginning to understand the warning better. 

“I fought with Tyler this morning,” Adam started. Ronan didn’t move or even acknowledge that words had been spoken, so Adam continued. “It was...It has been weighing on me all night, because it made me angry and I didn’t want to talk about it because tonight was the first night that I’ve seen you in so long, which just made it worse.”

Ronan was silent, still staring at his hands.

“Ronan,” Adam said, a little sharper than he’d intended. 

“What did you fight about?” Ronan asked. It wasn’t the question Adam expected, so the truth came out without thought.

“You,” Adam said.

Ronan nodded, as though this  confirmed something, as though he had known the answer all along. Adam thought that maybe he was making the situation worse instead of better, but he didn’t know why.

“It wasn’t really about you  _ you _ ,” Adam said. “It was the idea of you. He thinks that it’s stupid that I’m still dating someone from high school...” 

Adam’s words failed him just then, because he saw the moment that Ronan’s expression shifted from carefully held neutrality to a frown. Ronan’s hands slid down the steering wheel and it was so quiet in the BMW that Adam could hear the soft leather of his bracelets whisper together as he did it. He wanted to grab Ronan and shake him out of whatever this sudden fugue was, but Adam felt instinctively that would make it worse. Ronan was a fragile thing, when it really came down to it and Adam, for the first time, was scared of breaking him. 

“And you?” Ronan said. He was looking at Adam now and his eyes were so blue that it seemed unfair to Adam. The question bewildered Adam and he considered it carefully. The last piece snuck into place and Adam understood what it was that Ronan was asking.

“Ronan,” he said and his voice was shaky and low. Ronan’s eyes flicked away from him, but then re-focused, intense and sharp enough to cut right through Adam. This hurt that Ronan was feeling just then was Adam’s doing and it was a terrible blow to realize it. “That’s not…” he started, but stopped because he wasn’t sure how to best finish the thought. Instead he leaned across the gear shift and slowly, purposefully kissed Ronan. The other boy was completely still, but allowed Adam to pull him closer. 

“I told you that I fought with Tyler, you idiot,” Adam said, when he finally pulled away. “It’s because I told him to fuck off.  I’m pretty in love with that loser from high school and I think I always will be. I was upset at dinner because it ruined my fucking day and I’m sorry that I didn’t explain.” 

Ronan was still very close to Adam, who had his hip crushed against the gear shift uncomfortably. Adam, still moving slowly as if he might startle the wild creature crouched in the car next to him, took Ronan’s hand and kissed his knuckles, one at a time. Ronan watched him do it silently and then when Adam had finished, he let out a long, ragged breath as though he had been holding it the whole time. 

“I thought…” Ronan said and then shook his head. Adam wanted to kiss him again. He wanted to do a lot more. 

“I love you,” Adam said after the silence had stretched between them and it was clear that Ronan wasn’t going to complete his thought either. There was a time when the words would have felt as precious to Adam as his time or the $10 crumpled in his pocket, counted out as sparingly as possible and carefully guarded, but now, with Ronan, the words were easy because Adam could feel love stretching out inside of him and he couldn’t feel the end of it. He didn’t know if there was an end to it. 

Ronan’s brow had furrowed as he looked at Adam’s hand in his, but then his expression resolved and he leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, tapping it there twice before looking back at Adam.

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?” Ronan asked, but he was smiling when he looked up.

Adam kissed Ronan again. 

  
  


\--

 

_ 5 _

 

\--

  
  


When Adam had asked if he could take his last final a week early, he had expected a “no”, but his professor had just squinted at him and shrugged. He had sat for the exam in the hallway outside her small office during office hours the next day and finished it carefully, wanting it to be known that he had both studied and cared about the exam and not just about getting to summer break early. His professor didn’t seem to care either way and had smiled at him in a kind but distracted way when he had finished and turned it in.

“Have a good break,” she’d said and Adam nodded. He left her to the piles of papers she was grading and made his way back outside. Although there were plenty of windows in the old building, sunlight never seemed to quite penetrate the fluorescent lights, so he always had to squint when he emerged from class.   _ Free _ , he thought as he let the heat of the day roll over him. 

Adam had already packed up the few possessions he had into the back of his car, which was blessedly running reliably for the time being. He had done a tune-up last night to make sure the Hondayota could handle the drive back to Virginia. He had thought of the Pig then as he hunched over the hood of his car and hoped Gansey, Blue and Henry were already home or would be soon. They had been vague about their arrival times when he’d spoken to them last, but they would be home soon enough. It would be the first time they would all be together in nearly a year and although the postcards and phone calls had been a lifeline for Adam in the worst days of his first year at college, he would be glad to have his friends back in the flesh.

He drove like a thing possessed all the way back to Singer’s Falls, which is to say, he drove like Ronan Lynch. He still only managed the trip in five hours and he wondered how Ronan had ever made it in less. When the stark, utilitarian highway started to give way to the rolling hills and curving roads of the country Adam had grown up in, he allowed himself to feel a thrum of excitement. 

_ Home _ , he thought and in the same breath wondered when the word had stopped meaning that old trailer at the end of a dusty road and had started meaning Ronan Lynch. When he rounded the last corner of the highway and took the turn into the Barns, his heart flipped in his chest strangely and the smile on his face felt as though it would never leave. Adam couldn’t remember, right at that moment in his car driving slowly up to the Barns, what it felt like when he wasn’t smiling.  

He pulled next to the BMW and cut his engine. The porch light flicked on and a small head peeked through the door and a moment later, the rest of Opal appeared. She skittered out the door as a voice yelled after her, clearly annoyed. Adam was only halfway out the car when she latched herself onto him, babbling in a strange tongue.

“Hey, kid,” Adam said fondly and ruffled her shock of blonde hair. She stared up at him with wide, delighted eyes. When he looked up to the sound of the porch door slamming open again, Ronan was standing there looking a little dumbfounded. Adam, with Opal still attached like a barnacle, made his way up to the porch.

“I was supposed to help you move out next week,” Ronan said. He was leaning against one of the porch supports in a loose black tank, ratty jeans and no shoes. His head was fuzzy with hair and Adam wondered when he had shaved it last. Opal released his arm, kissing it soundly, and smiled at him before disappearing inside followed by the sound of a loud crash. Ronan cursed softly, which made Adam smile again, warmed by the familiarity of the moment. He felt at once as though he had lived this moment before and as if he would like to keep on living it for as long as possible. 

“I wanted to surprise you,” Adam said and he stepped up the porch stairs to kiss Ronan, wrapping his arms around Ronan’s waist and hugging him close in the motion. Ronan responded immediately by running his hands up Adam’s arms and threading his fingers in his hair. When Adam pulled away, Ronan’s eyes were bright and his skin flushed. Adam was sure he was a mirror image - he felt as though every inch of skin that Ronan had touched tingling with the sensation.

“Consider me surprised,” Ronan said. He was a little breathless when he said it which pleased Adam to no end. 

“Also, after the last time, my roommate told me that he never wanted to see you in the room again or he would call the cops,” Adam added with a grin. He kissed Ronan again before the other boy could formulate what he was sure was a creative and profanity-laced response. It didn’t matter anymore, anyways. Adam had signed the piece of paper confirming Richard Campbell Gansey III as his new roommate the next year. The R.A. had squinted at him as though he might be insane when he’d done it, because it was almost unheard of for sophomores to live in the freshman dorms, but in the end, she had shrugged and taken his selection anyway. It had been Gansey’s idea (or maybe Blue’s, he thought privately, but didn’t say) to live together in the dorms. Adam suspected Gansey could easily have gotten a private room or an off-campus apartment and had felt unexpectedly touched when Gansey had broached the idea of living together in the dorms, a place that allowed Adam his pride in its inherent egalitarianism. Plus, it neatly solved the question of whom would live with Adam after Tyler had informed half the campus that Adam’s boyfriend from home had punched him in the face. 

“Have you heard from Blue yet?” Adam asked, later after they were comfortably tangled together in Ronan’s bed. Ronan was tracing invisible patterns on Adam’s bare skin, his fingers leaving a trail of pleasant sensations in their wake.

“They’ll be here on Wednesday,” Ronan said, the words mumbled into Adam’s neck and followed by a warm kiss. “I told her to call you.”

“Does that mean you talked to her?” Adam turned over to face Ronan and found him looking pained. 

“She called twenty times in less than an hour,” Ronan said defensively. “I thought Gansey was dying or something.”

Adam laughed.

“So, that’s the secret to getting Ronan Lynch to answer his phone,” Adam said. Ronan grunted, obviously aggrieved. 

“Phones are stupid,” he said. Adam closed the distance between them, laying his head on Ronan’s chest and feeling the other boy’s arms wrap around him tightly. Ronan’s heartbeat was steady and loud beneath his working ear. 

“Still,” Adam said. He thought of the hundreds of voicemails he’d left Ronan and the texts he would imagine Ronan reading that he never got responses to. “I wish you’d answer yours a little more often.”

Ronan shifted underneath him and his fingers came up to run through Adam’s hair. Adam closed his eyes at the comfort. It had been too long since they’d last seen each other and he felt like he might never get out of this bed again so long as Ronan was in it with him.

“Okay,” Ronan said, after a long time.

“What?” Adam asked, sleepily. He couldn’t think of what he’d last said.

“Okay,” Ronan said again. “I’ll try to answer the phone more often when you call.”

**Author's Note:**

> your comments will only encourage to write more of this trash fanfiction, so proceed with caution.


End file.
